Strong Enough by Melanie Harlow & David Romanov

Narrated by Joel Leslie & Bruce Cullen

I’ve enjoyed Melanie Harlow books before and I was interested to see what she would do with a queer romance. Strong Enough is co-written with David Romanov, a new-to-me author. It’s not obvious to me whether one author wrote one character or they collaborated across the entire book. There is a difference in Derek and Maxim but I’m not familiar enough with either author to be able to reliably recognise if one author wrote only Derek and the other wrote only Maxim.

Derek is an ostensibly straight guy who longs for a settled life, complete with wife and family. He was engaged (to a woman) three years earlier but his fiancée broke things off and he’s been basically single ever since. He’s 36 and is beginning to feel like his opportunity for a family is passing him by. He was raised in a religious household and has a strong streak of people-pleaser in him – most particularly when it comes to pleasing his father. As a result, Derek has long-suppressed his homosexual desires, dating only women. When the book begins, he is casually seeing a woman named Carolyn and trying to force himself to feel a chemistry that isn’t there.

I liked Carolyn very much actually. She was smart, nice and forthright. I was glad she wasn’t a patsy or demonised in any way.

Maxim arrives in LA from Russia, with a duffle bag and a six-month tourist visa. His dream is to emigrate to the USA and become a screenwriter. He’s 24 and gay and looking forward to all the opportunity he hopes the US will bring him. He had arranged for a friend to pick him up at the airport and paid a deposit on a room in a flat (sourced by his friend) but his friend does not arrive and Maxim ends up at a local bar, The Blind Pig, for a drink and something to eat as he decides what to do. There, his duffle bag is stolen and he is literally left with his passport, his phone (but no charger) and the clothes he is wearing. Derek’s sister, Ellen, runs the bar and she is the type of person who regularly takes in all manner of strays – from cats, to dogs to people. And she likes and feels sorry for Maxim.

And voila, Maxim ends up staying with Derek and the attraction between them quickly becomes apparent. Derek cannot suppress his growing feelings for Maxim but even when he decides to give in to them, it is in secret. He’s not ready or willing to come out.

The story is told in the alternating POV of the two main characters, with Joel Leslie reading the parts from Maxim’s perspective and Bruce Cullen reading Derek’s. Maxim has a strong Russian accent – ably voiced by both narrators in their turn, but I thought it was a particularly nice touch by Mr. Leslie to use the accent for all of Maxim’s sections apart from dialogue from other characters. That is, Maxim’s thoughts are in the accent too. It makes sense because the book is in first person but it hasn’t always been the case when I’ve listened to first person books where a character has an accent, so I noted it here.

I’m not qualified to say whether the Russian accent used was authentic. Sometimes it seemed a little… not-Russian but that may be more about what media I’ve been exposed to and the lack of real-life Russians in my sphere than anything else. One thing I did note though was that Maxim used his prepositions and idioms really well and that didn’t entirely fit with his newly-arrived-from-Russia character. Also, with both narrators, the Russian accent slipped at times and became midwest USA instead. I noticed this more often toward the end of the audiobook but it wasn’t explained in the narrative so I don’t think it was intentional.

I enjoyed Joel Leslie’s narration more than I liked Mr. Cullen’s. In part that’s because I didn’t like Derek all that much at times in the book. While he is presented as a caretaker he most often came across to me as selfish. He was constantly thinking about how hard life would be for him to come out, how hard having Maxim in his life had made things for him and not about how Maxim’s life was being affected. He was also a titch too demanding sexually sometimes for my comfort. Not coercive, but selfish and ungenerous. I got a bit tired of Derek being all “me me me”.

Also, and this is entirely a personal thing and not to do with Mr. Cullen’s ability as a narrator, I found his voice didn’t really work for me on the romantic hero level. It is difficult for me to say whether I’d have warmed to it more had I liked Derek better than I did so perhaps I’m being unfair. I would be prepared to try another book narrated by Mr. Cullen because he was technically very proficient for the most part. There were times when I thought his affect got lost by the end of a sentence and he occasionally spoke too quickly but there was nothing that was truly a problem for me.

I am keen to listen to more from Joel Leslie – perhaps without a Russian accent though.

It is a romance and there is a HEA but I had mixed feelings about it. Maxim fit neatly into Derek’s life but there was barely anything in the story about Maxim’s life. Maxim didn’t seem to have any friends apart from Derek’s sister and Derek’s best friend and his wife. He seemed to be present in the story as a foil for Derek and given I wavered between active dislike and lukewarm affection to Derek, it was not something that worked well for me.

I did have sympathy for Derek, coming to grips with his sexuality and falling in love. But I do wish he’d have been more aware of what others were dealing with and not just so focussed on himself.

Kaetrin